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Share this Story: Council approves expanded tourism role for EEDC, could include running K-Days and other events from Northlands

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City council has unanimously approved a scaled-down tourism role for the former Edmonton Economic Development Corporation, which could include taking over K-Days and other events from Northlands.

EEDC was stripped of its innovation and business retention mandate by council Monday morning in order to focus on attracting visitors to the city and event management at the Expo Centre and Edmonton Convention Centre. Tourism is already under EEDC’s mandate through Edmonton Tourism, which will become the corporation’s new name. A separate organization will be created to promote innovation and support technology companies.

Council approves expanded tourism role for EEDC, could include running K-Days and other events from NorthlandsBack to video

This new role comes with an annual funding reduction of $11 million, more than half of the already-approved $20-million tax share until 2022, with $5 million allocated each year to the new innovation hub.

Interim city manager Adam Laughlin said there is a possibility of the city becoming more involved in running annual events at the Expo Centre, notably K-Days and Farm Fair International, to provide assistance to Northlands, which is currently facing fiscal restraint.

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“As the remaining mandate for EEDC is defined as tourism and convention and the work that we’ve been doing trying to understand how they and the activities at the Exhibition Lands site work together, there is an opportunity here for us to continue to look at that,” he said.

Area Coun. Tony Caterina doesn’t think the agriculture non-profit will be able to survive if the city takes over its largest events. He said that the move could lead to a possible loss in grant funding from the province, which would then require the city to fork out additional funding.

“There’s probably a 99.9 per cent chance Northlands will not exist, which is fair,” he said. “But their ability as a non-profit with the granting process that they already have in place, is there any contemplation on how that could be brought into the new organization to maintain the grants that are already coming through?”

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Laughlin said the city will look into how absorbing these events could impact any grant funding from the province and report back to council.

Northlands has been struggling financially “for many years now,” Mayor Don Iveson told reporters Monday afternoon, and this solution could be a way to keep the much-loved events running. The organization only received $3 million in grant funding from the province this year, a drop from $7 million in years past.

“If the reality is Northlands has less dollars to work with to support particularly its agricultural programming and FarmFair … then that’s something that we don’t want to lose,” Iveson said.

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“To the extent that Northlands hosts a number of major events, including K-Days, making sure that as that organization endures cuts from the provincial government, that we don’t lose particularly FarmFair and also find some way to have a major summer fair in the city, whatever that looks like in a post-pandemic environment.”

Responding to the role reduction, EEDC interim CEO Maggie Davison said the company is pleased with the clarity given by council Monday and will be working to welcome visitors to Edmonton after the COVID-19 pandemic.

“We want to make sure, as we work with our partners and stakeholders, that we set Edmonton up for success when the time comes to relaunch activities to welcome travellers and host events at our venues,” she said in a statement.

Recruitment for the new innovation entity’s eight-member board will begin this week, set to come fully online next year.

Share this Story: Council approves expanded tourism role for EEDC, could include running K-Days and other events from Northlands

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